agreed bud!
ive been sitting here laltely wondering if life exists there? all looked good for a day or 2, what happened? financing? x-prize teams never have enough updates for me. Some goes weeks n months with nothing happening!!! its like busses! also ssp's webpage is pretty crap, for a big company, building planes for branson to go round the world, yet a webpage made by a gcse cookery student i bet!

I noticed that bristol kinda.... didn't do anything, ah well. And thats not tru... Armadillo Aerospace updates all the time (I enjoy that). And I think that maybe Scaled Composites website never updates simply because they're being so secretive about everything, so there's really nothing for them to post... I hate having to wait so long for news. (Doesn't mean that I wont, though...)

_________________Only in darkness, the light. Only in silence, the word. Only in dying, life. Bright, the hawk's flight, on the empty sky.

They have gone to airshows a lot, so I guess their main activity is still fund raising. I supose it's the legacy of all those aerospace proyects that never got past the nice pictures on magazines, like the Sanger and all the Shuttle replacements. There must be a generation of "experienced" designers that have never actually made anything!

As I've said elsewere on the forum, some teams appear to have joined the XPrize as a way to get exposition and attract investment once the prize is won. Venture capital for private space travel has always been low, and after the company that made the Rotary Rocket got it's assets seized (for not paying taxes) the situation must have gotten critical.

The X Prize as fund raising might actually work and be good in the long run for space exploration, but it hurts the competition's credibility to have teams that obviously are not doing much of anything.

A team that has little budget can still do things, like De León and STC have shown. I'd rather invest (if I ever have enough money) in a bunch of backyard rocket makers that work like Goddard than in a team that only makes drawings and grandiose promises.

Speaking of space planes, what are your views on Pan Aero's concept of modifiyng a Sabre 40 executive jet to fly to space. Does it make sense? Wouldn't it just fall apart? Can you stretch so much a conventional jet concept?

I actually like their design (Bristol) the best, better than having to attach to a mothership and then go through the complications of releasing safely etc. I emailed them last year and they said no physical parts had been made yet and they were still collecting capital to pursue the project.

Speaking of space planes, what are your views on Pan Aero's concept of modifiyng a Sabre 40 executive jet to fly to space. Does it make sense? Wouldn't it just fall apart? Can you stretch so much a conventional jet concept?

I don't think it would fall apart. SS1 doesn't either.
The only problem I see is to get the plane back in a correct oriëntation for its vertical dive. If this is nose down, they will probably need special thermic protection for the windows.
The SS1 dives "belly-down" and uses the high-drag position of the wing to ensure this (like a feather of a seed of some plants)